The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

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126 p.o.v. number 13 March 2002 The editing phase Basically, the editing principles of fiction and documentary are the same. However, there are more possibilities when editing a documentary, as you are not bound by causality in the same way and thus do not need to tell your story in a certain way, which gives you a high degree of freedom; you should therefore consider alternative ways of piecing the material together. Try to maintain a certain sensitivity towards the raw material in order to avoid forcing it in the wrong direction because you are too focused on the story you had planned to tell. Rather than throwing the good story or the good feeling overboard, it might be better to give up on style, aesthetics or beautiful pictures. In his book In the Blink of an Eye. A Perspective on Film Editing (1995), Walter Murch says (in relation to the fiction film) that in order for a film to be fundamentally interesting, the main thing to strive for in the editing room is the evoking of emotion. Then, secondarily, comes the story. This principle of priority could be applied to the documentary as well (although from time to time it can be necessary to deviate from even the best of principles). In the above-mentioned book Walter Murch gives a piece of advice that is not only useful when editing a fiction film: ...one way of looking at the process of making a film is to think of it as a search to identify what – for the particular film you are working on – is a uniquely 'bad bit' (Murch, 1995, p. 11).
A Danish Journal of Film Studies 127 Likewise, when editing a documentary it is a good idea to search for and identify 'bad bits.' Some shots that you previously thought were essential to the film often turn out to be 'bad bits' when the film begins to take form. Also, remember the old slogan: "Kill Your Darlings." It can be difficult to identify the unnecessary 'darlings' or 'bad bits,' especially if you have become hypnotized by the material and are no longer able to see what works and what doesn't. It is always a good idea to get somebody to view your production with a fresh eye. Works Cited Bromhead, Toni de. Looking Two Ways: Documentary Film’s Relationship with Reality and Cinema. Aarhus: Intervention Press, 1996. Leifer, Anders. Også idag oplevede jeg noget… Samtaler med Jørgen Leth. Viborg: Informations Forlag, 1999. Leth, Jørgen. Det er ligesom noget i en drøm & Filmmaskinen. Udvalgte historier om cykelsport og film. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag, 1994 (orig. pub. 1976). Nichols, Bill. Representing Reality. Indiana University Press, 1991. Nichols, Bill. “The Voice of Documentary” (pp. 48-63) in New Challenges for Documentary, ed. Alan Rosenthal. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. Mamet, David. On Directing Film. New York: Penguin, 1991. Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye. A Perspective on Film Editing. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1995. Raskin, Richard. “Kortfilm og novellefilm – der er forskel,” Dansk Novellefilm, Festivalavis, November 1998, p. 13. Raskin, Richard. “Five Parameters for Story Design in the Short Fiction Film.” University of Aarhus, February, 1998. Truffaut, Francois. Hitchcock. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
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